Parallel Universe in Fiction

A parallel universe in fiction is a hypothetical universe that is a mirror image of our own. In a parallel universe, the characters in one universe appear in a second universe and face the same situations. However, they may not make the same decisions, leading to a different outcome and a new series of events. For example, a writer might set a novel during the time of World War II. In the primary universe, the Allied powers (the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union) win the war, just as they did in real life. However, in the novel’s parallel universe, the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) win the war, significantly changing the world in which the characters live.

Writers occasionally craft more than one parallel universe, creating what is called a multiverse. In a novel with a multiverse, characters may frequently interact with several parallel universes. The famous writer Stephen King created an extensive network of parallel universes—a multiverse—in his seven-novel Dark Towers series. In this dark fantasy series, the characters travel to parallel universes to save all existence, creating an interconnectedness among King’s novels.

In fiction, the term parallel universe does not always have the same meaning. A universe is an enormous spatial dimension containing many galaxies, each with its own planets and stars. Some science fiction and fantasy novels include an actual parallel universe and may enable characters to venture from one universe to the other. Others, however, use the term parallel universe to describe “parallel Earths.” Consider this example, which is commonly to illustrate the concept of a parallel universe: A child is struck by a car and killed while riding a bike. In the parallel universe, however, the child quickly swerves, avoiding the car. In this example, the parallel universe is a parallel Earth, another version of events on our planet.

Background

Science-fiction writers have been creating characters that travel between universes for centuries. However, the idea of parallel universes in fiction has become more popular since 1954, when a Princeton University doctoral candidate named Hugh Everett III theorized their real-life existence. His belief in these parallel universes in space became known as the “many-worlds theory” and was based in quantum physics. Since Everett made this assertion, fiction writers became intrigued by the idea and began actively incorporating parallel universes into the plots of novels and short stories. Everett’s theory also piqued interest among scientists, inspiring some to add credence to his theory, regardless of how farfetched it seemed.

According to many theories, including the many-worlds theory, parallel universes began appearing about fourteen billion years ago when our universe burst into action, expanding faster than the speed of light. This flurry of activity, called cosmic inflation, may have produced parallel universes. The Big Bang that may have created the universe was a consequence of this cosmic inflation. When the inflation slowed, matter and radiation appeared, creating an enormous fireball, which formed atoms, molecules, stars, planets, and everything around us.

Human beings cannot see parallel universes because inflation did not end everywhere at the same time. While it ended on Earth fourteen billion years ago, it continues in other places—a concept known as eternal inflation. People can never reach the next universe because, as inflation continues, it is moving away from them faster than the speed of light (186,000 miles per second), which is faster than we could ever travel.

In addition to the theories, the vastness of space has led some quantum physicists to believe that the existence of parallel universes is possible, if not likely. Hundreds of millions or trillions of galaxies exist in space, with each containing billions or trillions of stars. Such vastness makes it seem logical that space contains universes exactly like ours with planets just like Earth.

The scientific community has made progress, albeit small, in proving the existence of parallel universes. In 2012, US physicist David Wineland and French physicist Serge Haroche shared a Nobel Prize for proving that an electron can be in two places at one time and even in a different form, depending on how the observer views it. A group of NASA scientists conducting experiments in Antarctica in 2020 believe that they have uncovered evidence of a parallel universe. During their experiments, they noted that low-energy particles from space can pass completely through Earth, but higher-energy particles are stopped by Earth’s matter. Because of this, in the past these heavier particles have only been detected coming down from space. However, these scientists discovered that some heavy particles manage to come up out of Earth to travel back to space. This suggests that these particles are traveling backward in time, which, according to the scientists, makes them evidence of the existence of a parallel universe.

Time Travel and Alternative Realities

Authors have been interested in writing about time travel since the publication of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine in 1895. Time travel involves characters either journeying back into time or ahead into the future. Characters may travel through time in various ways and for many reasons. In Orson Scott Card’s novel Ender’s Game (1985), the characters traveling through space experience the passage of time more slowly than normal. This extends the life of the characters, allowing those who would be dead to continue to live for a while. In the movie Planet of the Apes (1968; based on the 1963 French novel La Planete des Singes by Pierre Boule) astronauts travel to the year 3,928 CE and discover that apes have evolved to have human intelligence and now dominate the planet, treating human beings as they were in the past.

Characters may time-travel into the past to change the course of history, which is referred to as creating an alternative reality. The terms parallel universe and alternative reality are often used interchangeably although they are not the same concept. An alternative reality changes a single universe while a parallel universe has two or more universes. For example, a character may travel into the past to kill a young Adolf Hitler to try to prevent the Holocaust. Characters might even try to prevent their own birth by traveling into the past to ensure that their parents never meet.

In some works of fiction, characters time-travel into the future. This usually has to do with gaining foresight or seeing the outcome of a situation. For example, a group of characters may wish to see if a present conflict between countries will result in a future war.

Counter-Earth and Convergent Evolution

While writers occasionally use the terms counter-Earth and parallel universe synonymously, they are different ideas. A counter-Earth is a planet like Earth that travels the same orbit but in an opposite direction, which means the two planets never see each other. The concept was used in old science fiction, in which a character might flee one Earth for another. It is rarely used in the twenty-first century except in very simplistic science fiction works.

Convergent evolution occurs when similar forms of a species evolve the same way even though they are apart. Dolphins and porpoises are an example. In fiction, convergent evolution usually refers to two planets, one of them Earth, that physically resemble each other and therefore have similar inhabitants. Often, characters travel to a planet with convergent evolution that was identical to Earth until something happened, such as the release of a virus that left the surviving population disfigured.

Parallel Universes in Science Fiction and Fantasy

Science fiction is a literary genre that explores what may be possible. Fantasy, on the other hand, describes the impossible. For example, in a science-fiction novel, the characters may create a time machine while in a fantasy novel, some of the characters may be dragons and fairies.

Some science fiction novels incorporate the concept of parallel universes. One such novel is Dark Matter (2016) by Blake Couch. In the novel, Jason Dessen walks home one night in Chicago anticipating a quiet evening at home with his wife Daniela and son Charlie. However, after he is kidnapped at gunpoint and drugged, he awakens in a laboratory strapped to a gurney. When he awakens, a man he has never met exclaims “Welcome back!” Jason is in a different world. Like the Talking Heads’ song “Once in a Lifetime,” he realizes that in this life, his house is not his house, his wife is not his wife, and his son was never born.

His Dark Materials is a trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman: The Golden Compass (1995), The Subtle Knife (1997), and The Amber Spyglass. The novels feature the coming-of-age of two children, Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, who travel through many parallel universes. Lyla is an orphan who lives with scholars at a college. A witch prophesizes that Lyla will change the world. Lyla searches for a lost friend, which leads her on a journey into other worlds. She discovers a series of kidnappings and a link to Dust, a mysterious substance. She meets Will, a teenager from our world who is being pursued by beings that are connected to the disappearance of his father.

In Gunslinger (1982), the first novel in Stephen King’s Dark Towers series, the main story is set in a world that resembles the Old West but in a parallel universe. Roland is the gunslinger and travels across a desert with his mule in search of the man in black. He meets a farmer named Brown and his crow, Zoltan. Brown takes Roland back to his home and offers to let him stay the night. Roland tells him about Tull, a town that he has recently passed through. The man in back was also in Tull and brought a dead man back to life. Roland has had a terrible experience in Tull, which resulted in him having to kill the people of the town. He recounts these details to Brown. In the morning, Roland discovers that his mule is dead, and he must continue his journey on foot. At a way station, Roland meets Jake Chambers, who died in his own world after he was pushed in front of a car while walking to school in New York City. Jake does not know how he came to be at the way station or how long he has been there, but he knows that he hid when the man in black passed by. Roland and Jake travel together into new lands, making their way into tunnels below a mountain. While there, they are attacked by enormous creatures called the Slow Mutants, but Roland fights them off. To speak to the man in black, Roland must sacrifice Jake. The man in black explains that he is merely a pawn of Roland’s true enemy, the man who controls the Dark Tower. King continues the story in the Drawing of the Three, the next novel in the series.

In some novels, a character’s dreams became a parallel universe. In The Heavens (2019), by Sandra Newman, Ben and Kate meet at a party in 2000. Ben is attracted to Kate but as he gets to know her, he learns that she repeatedly has dreams in which she lives in Elizabethan England in 1593, where she is a mistress of a nobleman. Kate thinks her dreams are real and her actions in them affect the present.

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